NetApp Product Overview

NetApp is leading provider of high speed/performance SAN/NAS storage. I’m working on various NetApp Products since past 5+ yrs as Storage Admin. This article gives overview of NetApp Storage products and Technologies…

•Dynamic volume expansion (DVE) – allows administrators to expand the capacity of an existing volume by using the free capacity on an existing volume group. DVE combines the new capacity with the original capacity for maximum performance and utilization.

•Streamlined Performance Efficiency – Intelligent cache tiering, which uses the SANtricity SSD Cache feature, enhances performance and application response time. The SSD Cache feature provides intelligent read caching capability to identify and host the most frequently accessed blocks of data and leverages the superior performance and lower latency of solid-state drives (SSDs). This caching approach works in real time and in a data-driven fashion, and is always on, with no complicated policies to define the trigger for data movement between tiers

* WAFL and RAID-DP – NetApp introduced double-parity RAID, named RAID-DP, in 2003, starting with the Data ONTAP6. Since then it has become the default RAID group type used on NetApp storage. At the most basic layer, RAID-DP adds a second parity disk to each RAID group in an aggregate or traditional volume. A RAID group is an underlying construct that aggregates and traditional volumes are built upon. Each traditional NetApp RAID 4 group has some number of data disks and one parity disk, with aggregates and volumes containing one or more RAID 4 groups. Whereas the parity disk in a RAID 4 volume stores row parity across the disks in a RAID 4 group, the additional RAID-DP parity disk stores. diagonal parity across the disks in a RAID-DP group.

The NetApp E5500 data storage system sets new standards for performance efficiency in application-driven environments. The E5500 is equally adept at supporting high-IOPS mixed workloads and databases, high-performance file systems, and bandwidth-intensive streaming applications. NetApp’s patent-pending Dynamic Disk Pools (DDP) simplifies traditional RAID management by distributing data parity information and spare capacity across a pool of drives. The modular flexibility of the E-Series—with three disk drive/controller shelves, multiple drive types, and a complete selection of interfaces—enables custom configurations optimized and able to scale as needed. The maximum storage density of the E5500 reduces rack space by up to 60%, power use by up to 40%, and cooling requirements by up to 39%.

* NetApp FilerView Administration Tool – GUI tools was used to manage NetApp Filer. However If you plan to run Data ONTAP 8.1 or later software, you need to use OnCommand System Manager software.

* NetApp FlexArray Virtualization Software – FlexArray enables you to connect your existing storage arrays to FAS8000 controllers using your Fibre Channel SAN fabric. Array LUNs are provisioned to the FAS8000 and collected into a storage pool from which NetApp volumes are created and shared out to SAN hosts and NAS clients. The new volumes, managed by the FAS8000. FlexArray has the flexibility to serve both SAN and NAS protocols at the same time without any complex add-on components, making the FAS8000 the ideal storage virtualization platform.

* NetApp DataMotion – DataMotion data migration software lets you move data from one logical or physical storage device to another, without disrupting operations. You can keep your shared storage infrastructure running as you add capacity, refresh infrastructure, and balance performance. You can use DataMotion for vFiler and Volumes.

* NetApp Deduplication and Compression – NetApp data compression is a new feature that compresses data as it is written to NetApp FAS and V-Series storage systems. Like deduplication, NetApp data compression works in both SAN and NAS environments. NetApp data deduplication combines the benefits of granularity, performance, and resiliency to give you a significant advantage in the race to meet ever-increasing storage capacity demands.